I’m sure a lot of you have seen Nokia’s N900 talk time test with the talking clock? if not its below.

I thought that I would do my own test as Nokia’s one is only really half a test (it’s assuming that if the battery is showing half left that it will last 2 times the time is has already lasted, which is usually rubbish so I thought I’d use some of my unused free minutes to do a test of my own!

Nokia’s Battery Test

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_kQw6xrwCY]

How long does Nokia say the battery will last?

This was really hard to find, Nokia’s specifications don’t seem to include it (only say it has a 1320mAh battery) and even gsmarena.com have just left it blank! but after searching around I found a post on the official Maemo forum which claims the following:

Operating Times
Always online: Up to 2-4 days (TCP/IP connected)
Talk time: Up to 5hrs WCDMA, 9hrs GSM
Active online usage: Up to 1+ day

We’ll soon see if these are even close!

My Battery Test

To make is more about the actual talk time rather than anything else I have set the phone up as follows:

Internet connection completely switched off

Any active desktop items disabled (i.e. RSS, weather, Facebook, etc)

Network signal: 3G

Called a landline number so I know I am not going to run out of battery on the other end!

Nothing done on the phone except screenshots every hour or so or when there is a significant change

Battery Fully charged

N900 fully charged

Start test immediately after disconnecting the charger

N900 Call started

Ok now the call has started, I kept checking back on the phone to see how long it would last and noticed that after 2 hours (like the Nokia video) the battery level was about half but about reaching the 4 hour mark people where expecting, lets just see!

N900 Battery life

Ok so as you can see the battery started dropping a bit quicker after 2 hours were up. At about 3 hours and 18 minutes, the “Battery Low” warning showed up for the first time and the level turned red so I knew it was on its last legs!!

It got to 3 hours and 30 minutes in and it was still going but then about 4 to 5 minutes later it switched off!

Note: I realised that I had a system monitor running which drains a lot of battery, so without that it should last a lot longer!

So if I factor in things like me constantly checking the phone to see the battery level, and taking screen shots, I think I could have squeezed about 5 or so more min out of it so I’d say talk time estimate to be about 3 hours and 40 minutes on 3G! (Much lower than the 5 hours I read on the Maemo forum)

If you run on 2G it should be about double this so around 7 hours 30 min to be optimistic! (Much lower than the 9 hours I read on the Maemo forum)

You have to note that in this test it is in best case scenario because if you have things going on in the back, i.e. texts, e-mails, etc the time will drop but at least now you know what you can stretch your N900 battery to!

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Blogger, and Moderator for "MyNokiaBlog.com" by Jay Montano. When I can, I also write help guides and review on my own site: JustGuides.net
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